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Sunday, March 5, 2017

Watch: This Is What Happens When You Sync Your Frame Rate with a Helicopter Rotor

No, it’s not a magic trick. It’s just clever cinematography.

If you perfectly sync your camera’s frame rate with the rotation of a helicopter’s rotor, some pretty interesting things happen. YouTuber Chris Chris has shared a video that shows a helicopter taking off, which sounds like nothing special, but because the camera that captured the scene had all the right settings, the blades of the aircraft appear to be completely still. Check out this crazy video below:

If you’re wondering how this trickery works, it’s actually relatively simple. The main source of confusion is whether it’s the frame rate or shutter speed that makes the effect possible, but both are actually necessary to pull it off. In an online discussion about the phenomenon, an anonymous reader broke it down: